All the movies worth catching in the capital, from an offbeat Shia LaBeouf biopic to an iconic French musical...
Out and about this week? Fancy a film but can't make your mind up what to see? Look no further: we’ve assembled the best of what’s showing in London and gathered them here to make choosing a great movie as easy as possible. Whatever you're in the mood for, WeLoveCinema has you well and truly covered…
Honey Boy
Few filmic reputations have flip-flopped as much as Shia LaBeouf's, whose eclectic body of work has found itself interspersed with highly publicised antics from the drunkenly offensive to the artistically batty. Recently, however, LaBeouf's rep seems to be on the up and up, and so Honey Boy – a film he wrote in rehab based on his own childhood – couldn't have come at a better time. Documentary filmmaker Alma Har'el, making her feature film debut, directs this meta journey into LaBeouf's life thus far, as “Otis” – a Shia surrogate played by Lucas Hedges – wrestles with his inner demons and – in a separate timeline – the complicated relationship he shares with his father (in a brilliant twist, LaBeouf plays his own old man). Deeply strange but also highly poignant, it's a star's soul laid bare, and one of 2019's most original films.
Get Honey Boy showtimes in London or read our full review here.
Ordinary Love
This film's title isn't messing around: Ordinary Love is more than happy to exist in the most banal of places, as emphasised by the union between retired couple Tom and Joan, played by Liam Neeson (taking a break from his skull-splitting action gigs) and Leslie Manville (wonderful here), whose life in Belfast is calm and uneventful – albeit in a nice, comfortable way that suits them just fine. Things change, however, when Joan is faced with a breast cancer diagnosis, and Ordinary Love zeroes in on the pair as they try to make sense of the situation. Playwright Owen McCafferty's subtle script wisely refuses to collapse into melodrama, and the result is a wry and mediative film about the ways in which we comfort one another in times of need.
Get Ordinary Love showtimes in London or read our full review here.
So Long, My Son
This heartbreaking, poignant, and historically-minded drama from Chinese writer-director Wang Xiaoshuai unfolds over the course of an admittedly weighty three-hour-long runtime, but it's a film – like Martin Scorsese's recent masterpiece The Irishman – that needs you to feel the years in order to tell its era-spanning story spanning four decades. Beginning somewhere in the mid-1970s and culminating in the present day, So Long, My Son zeroes in on the mostly tragic tale of a couple haunted by the death of their only son. Using shifting time frames that occasionally disorientate and add mystery, it's a sad and melancholy piece about China's changing policies and the power of the family unit, but one that's not without hope.
Get So Long, My Son showtimes in London or read our full review here.
Motherless Brooklyn
Sometimes an actor/director is given the chance to cash in their chips for what can only be referred to as a “passion project.” Edward Norton's Motherless Brooklyn is one such film, for better or worse. Based on the best-selling crime novel of the same name by author Jonathan Lethem, the story sees a tic-addled private detective (Norton) traversing the seedy underbelly of '90s New York in a bid to solve the murder of his mentor, played by Bruce Willis. Clearly taking its cues from classics of the noir genre like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and – of course – Chinatown, Motherless Brooklyn's heft is sure to divide audiences, though it's a work that offers some distinct pleasures – mainly because they just don't make films like this anymore, and also because Norton has roped in Willem Dafoe and Alec Baldwin in fun bit-parts.
Get Motherless Brooklyn showtimes in London.
The Cave
There's no use pretending that Feras Fayyad's new film, The Cave, doesn't have a lot in common with recent doc masterpiece For Sama. After all, both films follow women at the height of the Syrian conflict and are largely set in and around hospitals. But whilst For Sama gave us a deeply personal account of life in a war zone from the point of view of a filmmaker addressing her baby daughter, The Cave's focus is on Dr. Amani Ballour, a twentysomething who worked alongside her miraculous team in Eastern Ghouta to treat countless wounded citizens in an underground medical facility (“The Cave” of the title) back in 2017 and 2018. Yet another essential portrait of bravery and selflessness in the face of truly hellish odds.
Get The Cave showtimes in London.
Knives Out
Rian Johnson has taken a well-deserved break from the Star Wars universe to gift us with what might just go down as the year's most entertaining film. Positioned as a modern take on the Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, Knives Out is a fast-paced whodunnit set in a house that – according to one of the characters – “looks like a Clue board.” It's Christopher Plummer's murdered patriarch, Harlan Thrombey, who draws a flamboyantly-accented Daniel Craig (having the time of his life) to interrogate the suspects: Harlan's own family. With delicious turns from Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, and Chris Evans, and featuring a star-making performance from Ana de Armas, Johnson has crafted a relentlessly funny, clever, and razor-sharp yarn that doubles as a finger to the entitled rich.
Get London showtimes for Knives Out or read our full review here.
The Nightingale
Jennifer Kent made quite the impression with chilly horror The Babadook, definitely one of the best films of 2014. It's taken almost five years for her to gift us with another, and so The Nightingale – a brutal and punishing epic set in early 19th century colonial Australia – arrives with lots of expectations. First things first: this isn't quite the accessible arthouse flick with mainstream appeal that The Babadook was. Instead it's a morally murky and fervent attack on white male aggression, as told through the plight of Irish urchin Clare Carroll (a mesmerising Aisling Franciosi), who sets out on a dangerous quest into the Tasmanian wilderness to track down the men who killed her family. Think The Revenant, but with a deeply feminist kick.
Get London showtimes for The Nightingale or read our full review here.
The Two Popes
A film about two old blokes meeting up for a chat doesn't sound like the stuff of great cinema, but what if said blokes were actually Popes, and what if said Popes were played by Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce? Now we're talking! Directed by Fernando Meirelles – he of City of God fame – and based on a script from Darkest Hour writer Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes imagines the friendly rivalry between Hopkins' Pope Benedict and Pryce’s Cardinal Bergoglio as they come together in the wake of Pope John Paul’s death. It makes for a surprisingly entertaining film that's at its unexpected best whenever its two leads are simply together in a room, mulling over life's big questions and indulging what can only be described as a “Catholic bromance.”
Get London showtimes for The Two Popes.
Gremlins
This Steven Spielberg-produced comedy-horror, helmed by schlockmeister Joe Dante, is back in cinemas to celebrate its 35th anniversary – and just in time for Christmas. Everyone knows the rules when it comes to the infamous title creatures, of course: don't get them wet, don't expose them to bright light, and don't feed them after midnight. Gremlins wouldn't have been half the fun had its heroes – played by Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates – stuck to the rules, though, and Dante has a blast letting his mischievous critters run rampant in this hilariously cynical, satirical gem. Still, if there's just one reason to return to Kingston Falls this December, it's to get reacquainted with loveable mogwai Gizmo. Now say “Awww.”
Get Gremlins showtimes in London.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The film that partly inspired Damien Chazelle's Oscar-winning musical La La Land, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg returns to the big screen this week as part of the BFI's “Musicals!” season. Helmed by renowned French New Wave writer-director Jacques Demy back in 1964, Umbrellas zeroes in on musical-hatin' Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) and his beloved Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve, gorgeous) as they wander the city and fall in love. In a way, this is a deconstruction of the American musical genre and a subversion of it, too; but it also works entirely as a bonafide musical, as Demy juxtaposes the harsh realities of life – including a war – against characters who simply can't stop singing.
